Introduction. James Corkery and Thomas Worcester

Transcription

1 Introduction Many images could have been selected for the cover of this book; we chose Corot s View of Rome, painted in It offers a particular angle of perspective on the dome of St. Peter s, the Castel Sant Angelo, and the Ponte Sant Angelo across the Tiber river. The St. Peter s Basilica that exists today, and is seen in Corot s image, was begun shortly after 1500, and over these last five centuries it has become a central place for the pope to function as pastor, celebrating sacraments and preaching and teaching. The basilica has also served as the venue for the two most recent ecumenical councils, councils called by the pope. The Castel Sant Angelo (begun in 135 ce) was originally the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian, and popes for centuries used it as a fortress for protection against enemies and/or as a prison. This tomb, fortress, and prison thus evokes the history of the pope as a princely head of state, and successor to the caesars. This book places special emphasis on how two roles of the pope prince and pastor have evolved over the past 500 years. Attention is also paid to the role of patron, a role closely associated with that of prince. Though the pope has become principally if not exclusively a pastor, a kind of universal pastor, the chapters that follow explore some of the complexities of how he has become that. It will become clear that it has not been through a simple, linear evolution, and still less solely through free choices made by popes. If the pope as prince was frequently challenged, so too has been his role as universal pastor, as a pastor claiming a kind of universal jurisdiction and doctrinal authority throughout the world. What popes have done is less the focus of this book than is the question of how performance of certain functions or roles has been perceived, promoted, and/or critiqued. How the roles of prince and patron have been largely replaced by that of pastor alone will be examined, as well as how that transition has been elicited from the papacy by a wide variety of factors and forces at times beyond papal control. 1

2 2 What this book is not should perhaps be underlined. It is not another general history of the papacy; there are already many excellent works of that genre, Eamon Duffy s among them. 1 Nor is it a comprehensive, chronological, or alphabetical account of one pope after the next, such as many fine dictionaries and encyclopedias offer. Rather, this book examines a number of especially significant popes since about 1500, significant for the ways in which their pontificates reveal tensions about, reactions to, developments in, and changes in the role or roles of the pope as prince and/or pastor. Renaissance Rome is where this book begins. John W. O Malley, in his work on preaching before the papal court in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, has studied the kind of preaching that was done in that time and place. The preachers were usually members of religious orders; the pope himself did not preach, though much of the preaching was done in his presence. 2 That the pope rarely if ever preached may come as a surprise to those familiar with the papacy of John Paul II or of other recent popes. Preaching has come to be a major part of the pastoral role of the pope, and the pastoral role has come to take precedence over any other roles. Much has changed in the last 500 years. To be more specific in chronology, by the papacy since 1500 we mean the papacy since the pontificate of Julius II ( ), Giuliano della Rovere. Julius was the epitome of what is sometimes referred to as a Renaissance pope. He lived as an Italian prince of that time, and thus he spent much of his efforts on war, seeking to defend and, better yet, extend his territory on the Italian peninsula. He was even called the warrior pope, and, wearing armor, he led troops into battle. 3 The beneficiary of nepotism his uncle was Sixtus IV, who made the young Giuliano a cardinal Julius II bribed his way to election as pontiff, replacing Pius III, who died less than a month after his election. Though Julius did not have as many mistresses and illegitimate children as some bishops of Renaissance Rome, his daughter Felice played a prominent role in early sixteenth-century Rome, as a recent biography of her makes clear. 4 Pope Julius was one of the great Renaissance patrons of the arts, choosing the very best artists of the 1 Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 2 John W. O Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979). O Malley has recently published an overview of papal history: A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2010). 3 See Christine Shaw, Julius II, the Warrior Pope (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). 4 See Caroline Murphy, The Pope s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

3 Introduction day, Michelangelo among them. The pope as patron of the arts emerged as equal to the pope as pastor or as warrior prince. Julius laid the foundation stone of the new St. Peter s Basilica, the basilica we see today. One of the ways in which he financed his bellicose and cultural enterprises was through the sale of indulgences, and Martin Luther s critique of such practices is usually considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. 5 Frederic J. Baumgartner s chapter in this volume highlights how Julius, who may have chosen this name in imitation not of an earlier pope but of Julius Caesar, was perceived as above all a prince and warrior devoted to expansion and defense of his territories, the Papal States, and to driving French troops out of Italy. Julius was seen as impetuous, prone to fits of rage, and ready to put all sorts of things up for sale, indulgences included, in order to fill the papal treasury. The role of Julius as patron of artists such as Michelangelo, Bramante, and Raphael was seen at the time as an integral part of his role as prince, but also as part of his role as supreme pastor of the Catholic Church. Baumgartner points out that many of the negative assessments of Julius came from outside the Papal States and indeed outside Italy. Many of the popes in the sixteenth century came from the most powerful families in Italy. Julius II s family, the della Rovere, was actually of relatively modest standing compared with the Medici, the family of Julius s successor, Leo X ( ). Though the Protestant Reformation was well underway by the end of his pontificate, Leo seems to have had other priorities, including patronage of the arts and fascination with a pet elephant given to him by the King of Portugal. 6 Leo was not the only Medici pope; his cousin Giulio, whom he had made Archbishop of Florence and a cardinal, reigned as Clement VII ( ). Kenneth Gouwens s chapter in this volume examines Clement s eventful pontificate, including the 1527 sack of Rome by troops of Emperor Charles V. For an extreme case of a negative response to, or reception of, a pope s actions, it would be hard to find a better example than this. Clement and the entire city of Rome paid dearly for papal support of the French in the on-going wars between France and the Holy Roman Empire. Gouwens shows how Clement was more successful in promoting Medici power in Florence than he was in pursuing his many goals as Bishop of Rome. Still, Gouwens makes clear that, as patron of the arts, Clement was viewed favorably, for he extended 3 5 For Luther on the papacy, see Scott Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981). 6 See Silvio Bedini, The Pope s Elephant (Nashville: Sanders, 1998).

4 4 papal support not only to the visual arts but to music and literature. Gouwens also considers both hostile assessments of Clement especially as prince made in the 1520s and 1530s, and how recent historiography has been more balanced in its accounts of Clement s reign. Paul III succeeded in convoking a council at Trent. One of the most interesting things about the Council of Trent, meeting between 1545 and 1563, is its reform decrees calling on bishops and parish priests to get their act together, reside in their dioceses and parishes, and make pastoral ministry their priority. Such changes surely were an innovation for many clerics in that era. The silences of Trent are also interesting. These stand out: there is nothing at Trent on the church expanding outside Europe, in the Americas and elsewhere, even though by the time the council met such expansion was very considerable. And there is no decree at Trent on papal authority, despite repudiation of the papacy by Luther, Calvin, and other Protestant reformers. It is true that in the closing session of Trent, in 1563, the council fathers voted to seek papal confirmation of the council s canons and decrees, confirmation that was obtained from Pope Pius IV. In the following years implementation of Trent was promoted by popes such as Pius V. For example, the council had asked the pope to oversee publication of a revised Roman missal, and Pius V did that. 7 In her chapter, Pamela M. Jones considers what led to Pius V ( ) being canonized as a saint a century and a half after his death. In other words, she examines post-mortem reception of Pius V, especially by his successors as pope. Jones highlights tensions in the image of Pius V that emerged beginning with the pontificate of Sixtus V ( ), who initiated the process for beatification and eventual canonization of Pius V. Pius was remembered both as a warrior, most especially as one of the leaders of a coalition that led to a naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571, and as a man of intense prayer before the crucifix and of deep devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary. In the decades after Trent, as the papacy took more seriously its pastoral role, popes also strove to keep up, as it were, with other heads of state. Post-Tridentine popes worked hard as princes and as pastors. 8 And 7 For an excellent summary of what Pius V did as pope, see A. D. Wright, The Early Modern Papacy: From the Council of Trent to the French Revolution, (New York: Longman, 2000), See Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, trans. Susan Haskins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See also Prodi s revised version, Il sovrano pontefice: un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006).

5 Introduction 5 they were very image-conscious, as we might say. The rebuilding of Rome, architecturally and spiritually, was a primary concern; 9 the completion of the new St. Peter s, intended to be the largest church in Christendom, was a major focus for popes through the mid-seventeenth century. Papal rituals also helped to promote the dignity, the authority, the mystique of the papacy. Peter Burke has argued that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a kind of high-water mark for elaborate rituals that were designed to display the pre-eminence of the pope in both temporal and spiritual realms. Julius II had founded the Swiss Guards, and there were other mercenary troops employed by popes, but the lack of an army comparable to that of most princes or kings had to be compensated for in some way, and in part, at least, by ritual: its magnificence, its complexity, its ability to display hierarchical order. For example, most visitors to the pope had to genuflect at two points as they crossed a room to meet the Holy Father; then they knelt to kiss his foot. For some occasions, trumpets were sounded when the pope made his entrance, carried in procession on a throne and surrounded by large fans of ostrich or white peacock feathers. When a new pope took possession of his cathedral St. John Lateran triumphal arches were erected for the procession to the basilica, and fountains flowed with wine. When the pope gave his urbi et orbi blessing from the loggia of St. Peter s, not only were bells rung but cannons were fired. 10 The urbi et orbi blessing was for the city of Rome and for the world. Post- Tridentine popes focused not only on Rome, but on the entire world, a world in which the Catholic Church was increasingly present, through the efforts of missionaries sent to the corners of the earth. When Pope Gregory XV created the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, in 1622, he acted as a kind of universal pastor, seeking to ensure a greater measure of papal supervision of evangelization beyond the limits of Catholic Europe. Gregory s efforts sought also to limit the power of Catholic monarchs over the church in their realms, but in the following centuries it was the monarchs of Spain, Portugal, and France that limited papal authority the most severely. 9 See Frederick McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 10 Peter Burke, Sacred Rulers, Sacred Priests: Rituals of the Early Modern Popes, in The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), On the rituals for taking possession of St. John Lateran, see also Irene Fosi, Court and City in the Ceremony of the possesso in the Sixteenth Century, in Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, eds., Court and Politics in Papal Rome, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),

6 6 Of seventeenth-century popes, none stands out more for his patronage of the arts, and for his efforts to function as a significant prince on the international stage, than Urban VIII ( ). Well known for his patronage of the sculptor and architect Gianlorenzo Bernini, whom he considered a Michelangelo of his own, 11 Urban also supported the other arts, including music. 12 Urban s pontificate fell within the period of what we now call the Thirty Years War ( ). His efforts to play a significant role in that major war and in its resolution were largely frustrated by a variety of factors. The pope was seen by many as an ineffectual prince. In her chapter in this volume, Sheila Barker examines criticism of Urban disseminated by pasquinades: brief, anonymous satirical writings, usually written in verse, both during and after Urban s reign. Though later generations would deplore the condemnation of Galileo s heliocentrism, a condemnation made under Urban VIII s authority, Barker shows how in Italy, at least, in Urban s own time, a range of other alleged papal faults were considered far more significant. From the 1640s on, Jansenists, taking their initial inspiration from Cornelius Jansen s work on St. Augustine, emphasized the sinfulness of humanity and the authority of Augustine, an authority they placed above that of the pope. Gemma Simmonds s chapter offers a sympathetic account of Jansenist non-reception of papal teaching authority in the second half of the seventeenth century. She shows how Jansenists juxtaposed what they identified as ancient traditions of Augustinian theology and of conciliarist ecclesiology with more recent and novel papal efforts to exercise absolute doctrinal authority and to turn aside Augustinian tradition. Simmonds also points out that the Jansenist spokesman Blaise Pascal, in his Provincial Letters of , mentioned the papal condemnation of Galileo as an example of papal fallibility. The eighteenth century was a time of enormous challenges to the popes, and not solely from a resilient Jansenism. One of the biggest changes in the exercise of the papal office over the last 500 years has been in the role of heads of state in church matters such as appointment of bishops. Whereas cathedral chapters had often chosen bishops in the Middle Ages, in the early modern era ( ) Catholic monarchs enjoyed that prerogative, in Portugal, Spain, and France. National churches, under royal patronage, existed in no small tension with a papacy of increasingly international 11 Howard Hibbard, Bernini (New York: Penguin, 1990), See Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

7 Introduction 7 pretensions. The Catholic monarchs of Europe were pleased to control episcopal nominations in their kingdoms, but they wanted more than that. By the 1700s, kings pushed hard against papal interference in their territories; separation of church and state was not the monarchs goal, but rather the thorough subjection of national churches to kings. Pope Benedict XIV ( ) was the first pope to utilize the encyclical as a way of making the papal magisterium function in a universal way, but he did so in an age when his role as universal pastor was contested by many voices, not least those of the Catholic heads of state. 13 Worse was to come for the papacy. The French Revolution and Napoleon seemed for a time to have nearly destroyed it. The Papal States were occupied repeatedly by French troops; Pope Pius VI ( ) died in France, a prisoner of Napoleon. His successor, Pius VII ( ), was elected in a conclave held in Venice. As Cardinal and Bishop Chiaramonte, the future Pius VII was considered a moderate, or at least as somewhat open to some of the Revolution s ideals. But agreement between Pius VII and Napoleon on a concordat governing church and state in France did not prevent Napoleon s troops from suppressing the Papal States and taking Pius VII prisoner. But this pope outlived Napoleon s empire and returned to Rome a hero in Thomas Worcester s chapter explores reception of Pius VII, and finds that being seen as persecuted by and as a survivor of Napoleon s imperialism served Pius and the papacy very well. In an age of restoration of monarchical authority, not only did Ultramontanists seek to restore the pope s authority to what it had been before what they saw as the horrors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but they wanted the pope to play a greater and more direct role as head of the church than had ever been the case. Pius IX ( ) was happy to oblige. Ciarán O Carroll s chapter examines how Pius IX fought a losing battle to retain the Papal States, and yet won, at the same time, a greater role as pastor of the universal church, especially as teacher of doctrine. The pope may no longer have been a prince as well as a pastor, but as pastor he was stronger than before. Conciliarism was rejected not only by a pope but by a council when Vatican I affirmed the possibility for the pope to speak infallibly, if certain conditions were fulfilled, on matters of faith or morals. O Carroll also shows how under Pius IX centralization of the Catholic Church progressed rapidly, and how Ireland in particular helped to lead the way in enthusiastic reception and implementation of an Ultramontanist vision of the church. 13 On Benedict XIV, see Duffy, Saints & Sinners,

8 8 Though it would be hard to overstate the role of reaction against the French Revolution in nineteenth-century European Catholicism, by the end of the century, Pope Leo XIII ( ) pointed in some other directions. He encouraged French Catholics to accept and work within the poli tical structures of the Republic. In his 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum (literally, Of New Things ), Leo applied a Thomistic understanding of natural rights to the question of capital and labor in the industrial age. He insisted that the state has a duty to intervene in the economy to protect the dignity of workers. Laissez-faire capitalism Leo presented as a threat to human rights no less menacing than a socialism that would confiscate all private property. Some papal encyclicals never get much attention and are quickly forgotten, perhaps deservedly; Thomas Massaro s chapter shows how Rerum novarum is most certainly not in that category. In many places, Catholic politicians and labor leaders were inspired by Leo s teaching and put it into practice. Popes after Leo XIII saw fit to recall and update the themes of his Rerum novarum: for example, Pius XI s Quadragesimo anno (1931), John Paul II s Centesimus annus (1991), and Benedict XVI s Caritas in veritate (2009). From the reign of Pope Leo XIII on, the publication of encyclicals and other papal documents, on doctrinal and spiritual matters as well as on questions of social justice, became a very major part of what popes did. The pope as a spokesman for human rights and human dignity eventually became a part of what people expected of a pope and not just what Catholics expected, but others as well. A defense of human rights that was grounded in a theory of natural rights could be directed to a worldwide audience, not solely to a Christian one that recognized biblical imperatives. While Leo s Thomism no doubt had elements of a very conservative looking-back to what was imagined as a golden age of thirteenth-century philosophy and theology, it also helped to point ahead to a prophetic style of papal discourse which popes such as Paul VI and John Paul II frequently employed. But, as may be repeated many times, the development of the papacy has rarely been in a straight line. It has been a matter of two steps forward and one back, and perhaps one sideways. Leo XIII s successor, Pius X ( ), had none of the zeal for Catholic intellectual life that animated his predecessor, and he pursued a relentless campaign against historical critical scholarship, perceived as a threat to Catholic doctrine. Yet Pius X also is remembered for encouraging frequent reception of communion and for allowing a younger age for first communion than had previously been the common practice. He was eventually beatified and canonized.

9 Introduction 9 Pius X died just as World War I began. When the Papal States existed, popes had often hired troops to fight wars for them, and entered into po - li tical and military alliances just like any other state. Since 1870, there had been no papal state. Charles R. Gallagher s chapter considers both how and why Benedict XV adopted an impartial stance in time of war, and the generally negative reception of this stance. During World War I, the impartiality of Benedict XV ( ) irritated governments on both sides, which suspected him of really favoring their enemies. 14 Gallagher gives special attention to British reception (or non-reception) of Benedict s policies during that war. It was also during World War I that Benedict published the Code of Canon Law. This publication surely reinforced the role of the pope as universal lawmaker in the church. But Benedict s efforts to broker a peace deal in World War I failed, and when the Armistice of 1918 came, he was refused the right to send a representative to the peace conference at Versailles. Pius XI ( ) resolved the Roman Question through the 1929 Lateran Accords, signed by the Holy See and by the Kingdom of Italy. The pope was once again a head of state (Vatican City). John F. Pollard s chapter considers how from Pius XI s creation of Vatican Radio in the early 1930s, the pope has become a kind of electronic pastor, with technological advances allowing his message to reach the ends of the earth. The impartial stance of Pius XII ( ) during World War II, and especially his alleged silence in the face of the extermination of millions of Jews, remains controversial. Critics continue to contend that Pius XII should have played a more public and prophetic role, in particular by exposing and denouncing the Holocaust. Pollard considers especially the significance of Vatican Radio broadcasts in helping to sort out such heated questions. For the post-world War II era, Pollard examines the pope on television and in film, up to John XXIII ( ). Reception of the pope henceforth included viewing him on one s own television screen; the pope could be seen and heard live, in one s own home, everywhere. The Ultramontanist bishops of the First Vatican Council could not have dreamt of such a vast opportunity to promote a pope-centered church. October 1962 saw the first sessions of the Second Vatican Council ( ), a council called by Pope John, but one that did most of its work in the pontificate of Paul VI ( ). John O Malley, in his recent book What Happened at Vatican II, argues that the council adopted a new 14 See John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV ( ) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999).

10 10 style of discourse. Unlike earlier councils that had delineated what was Catholic and what was not by issuing condemnations and drawing firm boundaries, Vatican II put in place a model largely based on persuasion and invitation. This new style relied heavily on concepts such as dialogue, cooperation, partnership; Vatican II so radically modified the legislative and judicial model that had prevailed since the first council, Nicaea, in 325, that it virtually abandoned it. 15 If O Malley is right, a key question for the papacy since that of Paul VI is whether or not the pope has adopted such a new style. Linda Hogan s chapter looks at reception of both Paul VI and John Paul II ( ) in their teachings on sex and on war. Paul VI s 1968 encyclical, Humanae vitae, stands out as a case of controversial papal teaching. Some might call the encyclical prophetic. Its reception was often negative, especially in Europe and North America. But Paul s teachings on war and peace also met with mixed reception. As Vatican II met, Paul VI traveled to places where no pope had been before. Modern technology had made possible a different style of the papacy, as itinerant as it was Roman. Paul VI s 1965 address to the United Nations helped to establish a new model of the papacy: one that was prophetic, on pilgrimage, and concerned to promote the good of all human beings in this world, not solely their salvation in the next. In the very year in which the United States dramatically increased its war effort in Vietnam, Paul VI pleaded for there to be no more war. The prophetic voice, however, is actually quite a different one from what O Malley attributes to Vatican II. 16 The prophet proclaims uncomfortable or unpopular truths and is rarely conciliatory or collaborative. It is easy to pass over the brief pontificate of John Paul I, some thirtythree days in August September He turned out to be the last Italian pope in a tradition of Italians-only popes that had lasted since But even in his brief pontificate, John Paul I managed to make a significant change that his two successors have followed: he abandoned the ritual of coronation with the tiara. This was no small innovation, especially for turning the page on some of the more imperial trappings of the papacy. Pope John Paul II developed Paul VI s itinerant model of the papacy further, with much more travel, all around the world. He also published many encyclicals and other writings in defense of human life and human dignity. Indeed, the prophetic style characterized much of John Paul s 15 John O Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), O Malley discusses prophetic culture as one of four cultures in his Four Cultures of the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004),